Avicenna quotes

Avicenna was a Persian polymath, widely regarded as one of the most significant philosophers and physicians of the Islamic Golden Age. His works on medicine, most notably "The Canon of Medicine," influenced both Eastern and Western medical science for centuries. He made substantial contributions to philosophy, science, and literature that shaped intellectual history. Here are 14 of his quotes:

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.

Avicenna

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

Avicenna

Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.

Avicenna

An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.

Avicenna

I [prefer] a short life with width to a narrow one with length.

Avicenna

Medicine considers the human body as to the means by which it is cured and by which it is driven away from health.

Avicenna

Those who deny the first principle should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped.

Avicenna

As to the mental essence, we find it in infants devoid of every mental form.

Avicenna

God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.

Avicenna

Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health.

Avicenna

God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change.

Avicenna

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final.

Avicenna